News Cut: June 22, 2008 Archive

Union issues emerging in Senate races

Posted at 9:07 AM on June 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

For entertainment value alone, few political ads recently can rival theTV spots against the Employee Free Choice Act. Under the proposed legislation, an employer would no longer have the opportunity to demand a secret ballot election when a majority of employees have signed union cards and there is no evidence of illegal coercion.

One ad features a potential union member being urged ordered to sign a union ballot by a union thug, portrayed as a cross between Jimmy Hoffa and former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

Another features mobsters-in-training in school.

The ads latter ad come comes from the Center for Union Facts, one of several related front groups for businesses and corporations, which are running the ads in several states where Democratic challengers are facing Republican incumbents. (The former ad comes from the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, a group of business associations.)

A Web site, LaborPains.org, is part of the same organization and last Thursday posted a video of Al Franken discussing his support for the legislation.

In Maine, the ads have been even more prominent, even though incumbent Sen. Susan Collins has a significant lead in the polls over her Democratic challenger.

The issue is a classic Republican vs. Democratic one, and as with most special interest ads, facts - or at least context -- are hard to come by. Gov. Pawlenty vetoed a DFL resolution earlier this year that supported the federal legislation. This came after a February hearing in which some union members insisted the current system makes it too easy to intimidate employees in a union vote (Listen to hearing).

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Another happy ending

Posted at 10:02 PM on June 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

By Sunday morning, the story of Keith Kennedy, 25, of Shoreview had shrunk to just a few column inches in the back of the local paper. It said fewer volunteers than expected showed up Saturday to search for the autistic man in the woods of Wisconsin. Hope clearly was running out.

He wandered away from a camp for developmentally disabled adults last week near Grantsburg and needed an anti-rejection medication for a kidney transplant he received from his father in 1995.

Sunday was the last chance. The search was to end.

But they won't need another day. The man who can only speak four words, was found Sunday evening by one of several St. Paul firefighters who've been volunteering in the search. "I now believe in miracles," his mother told the Star Tribune.

The many volunteers from this neck of the woods should step forward and take a bow.

It's the second sweet ending to a search in a week. Last week, two women -- one from Minnesota -- who disappeared while hiking in Washington state Alaska, were found -- alive -- several days later.

Update Monday 9:17 a.m.

This statement from the family has just been issued:

The family of Keith Kennedy wishes to express their deep appreciation to the volunteers and law enforcement who searched for and found their son. Keith is stable and improving. He is at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview in the intensive care unit. While the family appreciates the intense interest in their son, they are asking that the media stop calling their cell phones and home.

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The lost tribe revealed

Posted at 10:36 PM on June 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Brazil, you are so off my list... maybe.

This picture above was released last month by José Carlos Meirelles, an official with Brazil's Indian-protection agency. Originally, he said it was a photograph of a heretofore unknown tribe in the Amazon. Now, comes word that he's told National Geographic that the tribe was discovered in 1910.

Or put another way, the photo is a fake -- sort of. Yes, the plane flew over the tribe, and yes they reacted, but -- no -- it's not an "uncontacted tribe," the Guardian reported.

Meirelles admitted that the tribe was first known about almost a century ago and that the apparently chance encounter that produced the now famous images was no accident. 'When we think we might have found an isolated tribe,' he told al-Jazeera, 'a sertanista like me walks in the forest for two or three years to gather evidence and we mark it in our [global positioning system]. We then map the territory the Indians occupy and we draw that protected territory without making contact with them. And finally we set up a small outpost where we can monitor their protection.'

Apparently, Meirelles tracked the tribe down to try to create some support for policies that leave the Amazon, and its tribes, untouched and uncontacted. But he's got some explaining to do, since flying over them and photographing them qualifies as "contact."

His view? He proved the tribes exist despite claims from the president of Peru that uncontacted Amazon tribes are a concoction of environmentalists.

Not that they would stoop to such things, mind you.

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